Search

This study seeks to address pertinent economic and environmental issues associated with natural gas flaring, especially for the world's leading natural gas flaring economies (i.e. Russia, Iraq, Iran, the United States, Algeria, Venezuela, and Nigeria). By applying relevant empirical panel and country-specific approaches, the study found that fuel energy export positively impacts economic growth with elasticity of ~ 0.22 to ~ 0.24 for the panel examination. It is further revealed that environmental quality in the panel is hampered by increase in economic growth, gas flaring, fuel energy export, and urbanization. Moreover, for the country-wise inference, government quality desirably moderates economic and environmental aspects of gas flaring in Venezuela and Nigeria, and in Russia and Iran respectively. However, government quality moderates gas flaring to cause economic downturn in the USA. Additionally, economic growth increased with increase in urbanisation (in Iraq and the USA), gas flaring (in Iran and the USA), government quality (only in the USA), and fuel energy export (only in Algeria) while economic growth downturn is due to increase urbanisation in Russia and the USA, increase in fuel energy export in the USA, and increase in government quality in Russia. Meanwhile, environmental quality is worsened through intense carbon dioxide emission from increased urbanisation activity (in Iraq, Iran, Algeria, and Nigeria), increased fuel energy export (in Nigeria), increased natural gas flaring (in Algeria and Nigeria), increased GDP (in Russia, Iran, USA, Algeria, and Venezuela), and high government quality (in Iran). Interestingly, the result revealed that increase in GDP (in Nigeria), increase in urbanisation (in the USA), and increase in gas flaring (in Algeria and Nigeria) dampens environmental quality. Importantly, this study offers policy insight into sustainable approaches in natural gas production, government effectiveness, and regulatory quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to investigate the influence of rapid economic development on pollution at the municipal level in China. It constructs a Stochastic Impacts by Regression on Population, Affluence and Technology model (STIRPAT model) and uses comprehensive municipal data on industrial pollution and economic performance. The dataset contains 290 cities from 2003 to 2016 as a sample for the panel data analysis. The study further separates the cities into two groups by their levels of economic development for heterogeneity analysis. It reveals that a low level of economic development would aggravate environmental pollution, and when the economy reaches a high level, this economic development will improve environmental quality. We also find that the relationships between foreign direct investment and industrial dust and sulfur dioxide (SO2) discharge are significant, while the relationship between economic growth and effluent emission is not. The more developed subsample cities present an inverted U-shaped curve between industrial pollutant emission, GDP per capita, and foreign direct investment, while the less developed subsamples show no such relationship. Since the shape of these curves differs among regions, their turning points vary accordingly. Based on this finding, this study suggests that the governments of more developed cities should balance environmental pollution and economic development by enhancing environmental regulations and adjusting industrial structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]